"The way the game played out, it was kind of insane," said Farrin, who still works for the university but now as a writer and editor for the WSU Foundation. "I wasn't sure if we could do it, but when the game ended it was like, 'OK, here we go.'"

Farrin essentially lucked in to the most successful social media posting of his career. More than 5,000 retweets and 6,000 favorites wouldn't have happened without several major factors falling in his favor.

First were the uniforms. Oregon has been at the forefront of the college football fashion industry, and it's never unexpected when the Ducks release something that turns heads. But this game was a little bit different. Instead of anything traditional, Oregon unveiled uniforms in honor of Lewis and Clark. The silver and black uniforms featured a topographical map, a 33-star flag and a helmet with a silhouette of Lewis, Clark and the Duck pointing.

As has become a regularity, the uniforms went viral, with postings on ESPN, SB Nation and at The Oregonian/OregonLive, of course.

"I saw a tweet about it and it was the first thing that popped into my head," he said. "It was the Oregon Trail video game and the 'died of dysentery.'"

For those not aware of the wonder of The Oregon Trail, it was a computer game created in the 1970s that was designed to teach children about 19th century pioneer life. Players were tasked with crossing the country, like Lewis and Clark, and they could hunt and forge rivers and, of course, die.

Man, it was easy to die back then.

So Farrin pulled up the "You died of dysentery" graphic and put it in his back pocket, just in case he could find a way to use it. Initially, he had his doubts as to whether it would be appropriate. But throughout the week, the Ducks kept needling with the Oregon Trail theme, specifically with several tweets from the Oregon Duck mascot account, depicting a game of The Oregon Trail and a character named Butch - the name of Washington State's mascot.

For Farrin, this meant fair game. But in order to complete his counterpunch, he needed the second part of his luck to kick in.

Washington State needed to win -- something the Cougars hadn't done against Oregon since 2006 when Farrin was still a student at the nearby University of Idaho.

And frankly, WSU wasn't expected to have a chance against the Ducks. Yes, all the signs were there for an upset: Oregon was 3-2 and just two weeks removed from a 62-20 pasting by Utah. Quarterback Vernon Adams Jr. was still injured and Oregon was just beginning to realize how novice its secondary looked as Washington State and the air-raid offense made its way to Eugene.

But still, this was Oregon, a team that had played in the national championship game a year before. And this was Washington State, a team that had lost to Portland State four weeks prior and was coming off a 3-9 season in head coach Mike Leach's third year with the team.

The Ducks looked to have the game in the bag early in the fourth quarter when Royce Freeman drove it in from the one-yard line to give Oregon a 31-21 lead, but the Cougars hung around.

Erik Powell drilled a field goal with 3:53 to play to pull within 31-24. The Ducks went three-and-out, punted with 2:01 to play and, nearly two minutes later, Luke Falk tied the game up with an eight-yard touchdown pass to Dom Williams.

In the second overtime, Falk connected for a four-yard touchdown and the upset was complete moments later when Jeff Lockie was intercepted.

The Cougars on the sideline rushed the field.

Farrin clicked the "Tweet" button.

"You have died of dysentery," @WSUCougars proclaimed, accompanied by the hashtag #GoCougs.

And while Oregon's players and coaches sat in the locker room with a 3-3 record, Farrin watched his mentions explode.

Before Farrin's tweet, Washington State had never had anything retweeted more than 1,000 times. Now, Farrin was struggling to keep on top of everything as he watched the activity on the tweet begin to scroll like a slot machine.

Shortly after, the tweet began to make the waves across the internet.

"I knew it would go big. I knew it would get a ton of retweets and action. That went according to plan," Farrin said. "But it definitely went a lot bigger than expected. Within a minute, ESPN, CBS Sports, NBC Sports had all posted articles about it. The next day, all these different places had articles about it."

Farrin had reached the top. During his three years running social media accounts for Washington State, the goal was always to push the boundaries of the account's reach. Farrin said the Cougars have a large fan base beyond Pullman, and their Twitter account is one of the best ways to keep them up to date with Washington State. In order to do that, he needed to be engaging and, sometimes, funny.

This was both. Farrin received numerous texts and slaps on the back from friends and colleagues the next week. Universally, the tweet went over well, with the only occasional backlash coming from disgruntled Oregon fans.

"There were a handful of Oregon people who were upset about it, saying that we should act like we had won before," he said. "Or, saying that it was insensitive to the people who actually died on the Oregon Trail."

The biggest fallout, however, was the raised bar. After the tweet, Farrin said weekly meetings started with talk of the tweet, and how they could outdo it. Farrin had completed the Oregon Trail without dying of dysentery, now his bosses wanted him to embark on the trek again.

"We had a lot of conversations with people who'd say, 'OK, what's the next Oregon Trail tweet? How are we going to do this again?'" Farrin said. "In that way, it became a little difficult because now you have this crazy standard everyone measures your work against, but it was still pretty cool."

Farrin would leave the athletic department before this season, saying that he needed a change of pace after 10 years of working weekends August through July. Last weekend, he and his father went to Las Vegas to watch Idaho play UNLV, the first time they had gone to a game together as fans since he was in high school.

He'll do the same this week when the Ducks face the Cougars.

He's no longer paid to tweet, and the pressures and pleasures of crafting the perfect tweet are no longer there. But he still thinks about it on occasion. He definitely saw Oregon's uniforms last week, when their orange socks, green jerseys and orange face masks were used to resemble the Duck -- the same Duck that ignited the Dysentery War to begin with.

"Yeah," Farrin said. "We probably would have had some good stuff there."